Execution survivor remains critically ill as lawyer seeks commutation

Christa Pike, a Tennessee prisoner who survived two lethal injections, remains critically ill and on a ventilator, her lawyer said on Sunday. Attorney Stephen Ferrell said Pike was still hospitalised under guard and that doctors were attempting to remove pentobarbital from her body. He said her prognosis was not yet known and might not be clear for several days.

Ferrell called on Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to commute Pike’s death sentence to life imprisonment. He said Pike had endured what he described as a torturous execution attempt after spending more than 30 years in prison, much of that time in solitary confinement. Pike, 50, survived after two injections of pentobarbital, a drug that suppresses nervous-system activity.

Media witnesses reported hearing her snore for about an hour before they were taken from the viewing area at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. The failed execution prompted the resignation of Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Frank Strada. In his resignation statement, Strada said the department had carried out its responsibilities in line with established protocol.

Governor Lee, who had previously denied Pike clemency, has halted further executions through the end of the year while a third-party review is conducted. The case has renewed debate over the death penalty and execution procedures in the United States. Pike was 18 when she and her boyfriend beat and killed 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer at a job training camp in 1995.

Her lawyers had sought clemency by citing her age at the time, childhood sexual abuse and mental-health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder. Ferrell said he had been unable to see his client in hospital. He said the immediate uncertainty concerned both her physical condition and the long-term consequences of the failed execution.